Evaluating postgraduate courses in Health Promotion

Abstract

Background  Evaluation of short training/postgraduate courses, with focus on measuring acquisition of new knowledge, is often limited. Therefore, the aim of this study was to develop a Multiple Choice test for evaluating how well participating staff in the clinical prevention and health promotion training course had acquired knowledge. Methods  11 participants from a spring course and nine control persons took a pilot test, and 12 participants and 21 control persons took the final Autumn-test. A MC test was developed with 17 questions with three possible answers for each question. The participants answered the MC test as a pre-test and a post-test. Results  The pilot test showed that the number of correct answers in both groups resulted in a median of 13 ranging from 10-15 and 10-16 (p = 0.42), respectively. The Autumn testing showed a significant difference in number of correct answers between the pre-test and the post-test, 10.5 (6-13) versus 12 (11-13) (p = 0.016). Furthermore, there was a significant difference between the post-test of the participants and the answers of the control persons, 11 (8-14) (p = 0.02). In addition, the study found that the participants were positive towards answering the MC test, and that the test could be completed within the allocated period of time. Conclusion  A MC test can be easily developed to evaluate whether the participants acquire knowledge by participating in a training/postgraduate course in clinical health promotion. However, the MC test does not measure acquisition of new clinical skills and effect for the individual patients.